Instant messaging (IM) applications such as Jabber, ICQ, WhatsApp Messenger, and Skype are well known. In its basic form, IM provides real-time text communication, often called “posts” or “chats”, between two or more participants, thereby supporting a “conversation” between the participants over a communications network, such as, for example, the Internet. IM functionality is also commonly integrated into social networks, such as Facebook (i.e. Facebook Messenger), and collaboration applications, such as, for example, Cisco Spark. Many IM applications also provide more advanced messaging communications options such as file transfer, clickable hyperlinks, voice over IP (VOIP), and/or video chat.
IM and collaboration applications often support maintaining the continuity of an ongoing conversation between its participants by saving the communications as they are sent as a conversation's “history”. Some or all of the conversation's history may be presented to the users when accessing a given conversation.